Push and Pull || Maggie Greene

A Brush With Death

The next day I was woken up to my shoulder being gently shaken, my eyelids fluttering open only to close them again as a yawn escaped me. I open them once more to find Glenn in front of me and when he goes to nudge me again I knock his hand away gently.

"I'm up" I grumble before pushing myself off of the couch I had fallen asleep on. I wipe the sleep from my eyes and look to my friend, "What's up?" I question him and he motions for me to follow him.

"We're gathering rocks for the memorial and could use some help," he explains to me as we step out onto the porch and he nods to where a few others are already hard at work.

"Gotcha," I murmured and followed him over to the group. Once we get over to them I nod at them in greeting as they turn to look at us briefly. I get a few nods back while Shane and Maggie both said a quiet "Hello," to me before getting back to work.

It was silent for the next ten minutes and the only sound was the clang of rock against metal as we tossed the rocks into a nearby wheelbarrow.

Given as Shane hadn't been able to recover Otis's body, the Greene family decided on having a memorial still so that was what the rocks were for.

It was a nice sentiment as well as being about as close to a normal funeral as we could get, after all, many haven't been afforded that luxury as of late.

The rumble of a motorcycle in the distance made us all perk up and our attention was on the dirt road that led to the house. After a brief moment, Daryl came into view on his motorcycle along with a car and the RV not far behind him.

We watched as they made their way closer and I turned to T-dog, "Could you go let Rick and Lori know that the others are here?" I asked him and I watched as he turned and hurried to the house.

By the time he got inside the others were already parked and we all made our way to them.

My brother, Lori, T, and Hershel all came out of the house and walked towards the returning members of our group. I fell into place behind my brother as we all reunited with each other.

Dale made his way forward, "How is he?" The question was about my nephew and Lori was the one to answer.

"He'll pull through," she assured them. Lori then motioned to Hershel, "Thanks to Hershel and his people,"

"And Shane," Rick added, "We'd have lost Carl if not for him."

Relief showed on Dale's face and he stepped forward to embrace Rick, no doubt happy to hear that Carl would live and recover just fine. Carol also took that moment to hug Lori, and I smiled at that.

"How'd it happen?" Dale inquired, curious as to how Carl had gotten shot. "Hunting accident, that's all it was, just a stupid accident," Rick told him.

That's all it had been, an accident, Carl had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. It just seems like lately, every single person on this planet had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Around an hour later we had all headed to a spot a little bit away from the farmhouse to hold the memorial for Otis. We all were taking turns placing the Rocks we collected earlier into a big pile.

As we were all placing rocks onto the pile Hershel was reading from the Bible, and while I wasn't quite a religious person I do have to say the speech he was giving was beautiful.